Nostalgia

On November 10, 1969, Joan Ganz Cooney, an American television producer and Lloyd Morrisett, an experimental psychologist created “Sesame Street,” a long-running children’s television series. The programme – under the umbrella of the Children Television Workshop (CTW) – is known for its educational content, and images communicated through the use of Muppets, animation, short films, humour and cultural references.

Though an American concept, the programme made so much impact on children – and even adults – of my generation in Nigeria and beyond. So great was the impact that even as an undergraduate I continued to watch it until I called it quits when it gradually fizzled out of our television screens when 24 cable satellite stations took over.

I was nostalgic when I read last week that Sonia Manzano, the beautiful lady with the stage name “Maria” will be leaving the show after a 44 year active involvement. I didn’t know she was still around. I had to fish out a DVD collection of the show I bought to show my son how educational programmes were done in those days. Today, most things revolve around violence and stuffs that adds nothing to posterity.

What caught my attention about “Maria” were the long years she dedicated to impacting the lives of millions of children around the world. On the show, she ran a Fix-It Shop with her on-screen husband, Emilio Delgado.

The two-time Emmy nominee and award-winning writer – who is 65 – joined the show in 1971. She regularly gave advice to characters like Big Bird and Elmo. She was born in New York City and was raised in South Bronx. Her parents moved to the city from Puerto Rico.

Also an author, her children’s book “No Dogs Allowed,” published in 2004, is one of five books selected by the General Mills – an American multinational manufacturer of consumer foods – initiative “Spoonfuls of Stories.” Apart from helping children across the United States gain access to books, it also encourages them to read.

The aim of the show over the years was to improve the cognitive skills of preschoolers so that they would be better prepared for primary school education. By using TV as a medium, the CTW succeeded in bringing the educational message to a large proportion of preschool children. In fact, among its target group of 3-5 year olds, “Sesame Street” is very popular. It was reported that over 1.4 million households watch this program whenever it is shown.

How can one forget Cookie Monster, Bert, Ernie and their zany companions? However, it was not merely puppets and a host of clever attention-holding tactics but a well-defined set of educational goals that made “Sesame Street” so successful. I read that more than 1,000 studies have been conducted on the impact and influence of the show on children who watch it.

One of the evaluations showed how children were tested on a variety of items such as identifying body parts, letters, numbers, geometric forms, sorting and classification before and after a six-month viewing period.

Children who watched the programme showed a marked improvement in a variety of cognitive skills; more important, as viewing became heavier, the amount of improvement increased. The more they watched, the more they learned. The results were not restricted to middle-class children alone; disadvantaged children who watched showed marked improvements as well. Perhaps one of the most interesting outcomes is that reading skills improved, even though this was not specifically taught on the show.

One of the studies also revealed that Bangladeshi children who watch the local version, Sisimpur, were reported to show faster attainment of academic skills such as literacy and math, with literacy scores of 4-year-old viewers 67% higher than those who don’t watch.

Similar advances are seen elsewhere. In Egypt, 4-year-olds who watch the local version of, Alam Simsim, were said to perform at the same level on math and literacy tests as 5-year-olds who watch little or not at all. And children with exposure to Galli Galli Sim Sim, the local Indian version, show significant gains in Hindi literacy, especially those from less privileged backgrounds.

Strong improvements on a whole range of learning outcomes were also measured in Indonesia. Children who frequently watch Jalan Sesama outperform children who don’t watch the show on early cognitive skills (15% higher), letter recognition (10% higher), number recognition (15% higher), and counting (15% higher). And as another study shows, the impact adds up: Children who watch Jalan Sesama regularly over an 18-month period do better on academic skills, with letter recognition up 23% over those who did not watch.

Messages about sharing and growing together, dealing with difficult situations, and accepting others have been at the heart of Sesame Street from its inception. One study that focused on the socio-emotional impact of watching it demonstrates that children who view it with pro-social messages exhibit significantly higher levels of pro-social behaviour – such as cooperating, helping, and sharing – than those who do not watch.

Back to “Maria;” she was able to make an impact because she is one determined lady. Determination is a key attribute of sustained success. It is sometimes referred to as drive, which was what pushed her to give 44 years of her life toward the development of children across the globe.

Determination is closely associated with resilience: the ability to bounce back from setbacks, rather than giving up. Perseverance and persistence are also highly related. There is the old saying that a challenge is an opportunity, not a threat and we need to see failure as a chance to learn new ways of doing things. In her long years on the show she must have faced challenges that would have propelled her to call it quits, but she remained and forged on, not because of pecuniary gains, but to impact children.

When I watch children programmes these days, all I see are mostly meaningless cartons that add little to the learning process of a child. Most relish in the gun and violent culture that is prevalent today which is why we need more “Maria’s” to help our children realise that there is more to life than guns and violence.

I believe that violent cartoons have the potential of greatly affecting children’s behaviours growing up. Violence is a learned behaviour and therefore children need to see violence in order to become violent themselves. If a child is viewing their favourite character hitting, kicking, and beating up the “bad guys” a child will learn these behaviours too. And because most of these cartoons do not show any consequences for these behaviours – and in a sense glorify violence – children think that this is an acceptable form of problem solving.

It was revealed in one study that what a child watches on TV at eight years will be one of the best predictors of how aggressive he will be as an adult. What the child watches after eight years is not nearly as important as what they watch before that. The study pointed out that TV violence desensitises children to real life violence. They see the cartoon characters beating up the bad guys so when they see a bully at school picking on another kid they are less likely to find anything wrong with that situation.

A new genre of children’s cartoons said to be the most violent has been sweeping across satellite TV for the past few years. This type of cartoon called Anime is a type of Japanese cartoon based on video games. Such shows include Dragon Ball Z, Digimon, Pokemon and a host of others. These are shown on some cartoon channels and others.

My advice in this post-modern age is for parents to pay careful attention on what their children watch.